More recently, he has been better known for his role of Superintendent Ted Hastings in the BBC One thriller Line of Duty; a role he has portrayed since 2012. He has also appeared as Alan Cox in The Jump (1998 TV series), Martin Summers in Ashes to Ashes, Richard Plantagenet in The Hollow Crown, and as Father Flaherty in Broken.

On television, he starred in the first episode of Cracker, giving a performance as an innocent murder suspect with amnesia, and also the last episode of A Touch of Frost, and has been in many British productions, including Tough Love, Inspector Morse, Kidnapped, Murphy's Law, Murder in Mind, Ashes to Ashes and the 2005 re-staging of The Quatermass Experiment.

In 2008 he starred in and co-directed Brendan at the Chelsea by Janet Behan, playing Brendan Behan. The play was the first to be staged in the Naughton Studio in the new Lyric Theatre (Belfast) after it reopened in 2011 and is being revived for a tour to Theatre Row in New York in September 2013.